2023 senior care marketing trends

by katie reeves

The complexities inherent in senior care only became more complex since the pandemic. With earnest, high-level issues on hand, including rapidly increasing demand for services and staff shortages, senior care organizations are reevaluating their marketing strategies and priorities. How is senior care marketing evolving in 2023, and how do you adapt your strategy to remain competitive? Here are the top senior care marketing trends we think you need to keep in mind as 2023 begins:

1. Focus on Maximizing Marketing Budget

The triple whammy of increased competition, payment adjustments, and a recessive economy will mean senior care providers need to maximize their marketing budget. More than ever, every dollar counts now.

In 2023, senior care marketers must keep a close eye on their Google Ads campaigns and budget to ensure their acquisition costs don’t creep too high. Here are our tips on how to monitor your account and optimize it:

Remove Low-Intent, Low-Quality Keywords Low-intent, low-quality keywords may look appealing with their high search volumes, but they rarely translate into buying intent.

Target Relevant Keywords Refine your keyword strategy and target the most relevant keywords that produce high-quality leads.

Refine Your Ad Game Your messaging and ad copy forms the foundation of any Google PPC strategy. You need to put your best foot forward with relevant, quality ad copy with a solid CTA and supportive information to capture those seeking immediate answers.

Enhance Digital User Experience Landing page optimization is about improving the user experience and removing hurdles that block conversions.

2. Recruitment Marketing May Capture More of the Total Budget

Any senior care provider can confirm it—the industry has been and will continue to face dire staffing shortages. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that home health and personal care aides will grow by 33 percent in the next ten years, that still will not be fast enough to keep up with an aging population. Pandemic exhaustion, of course, compounded the problem, with 400,000 nursing home and assisted living staff quitting since early 2020. With census statistics showing that the elderly population is predicted to double by 2040, senior providers will have to focus more of their marketing initiatives on recruitment.

With numbers like those, it’s clear—senior care companies must invest in employee retention, brand marketing, and provider recruitment. Your affiliated brands and caregivers should be prioritized as much as your patients and residents. Without a strong recruitment pipeline, senior care groups won’t be able to expand their capacity or grow.

3. The Industry’s Digital Transformation Continues

In general, the healthcare industry has lagged in digital advancements. Senior care is no exception. While many senior care providers may have websites at this point, they are typically basic with little content or information. Digital is the key to improving operational efficiency, producing outsized returns for investors, and helping more people get mental health care.

Digital is also vital to improving the quality of patient and resident care, and it’s especially relevant in senior care. For example, wearables with fall detection provide much-needed acute data in crises, while edgesupported cameras and sensors help with monitoring. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are also stepping in to address some care pain points, parsing large data sets related to behavior patterns to tech-powered services and products.

4. Your Website User Experience Remains Paramount

Google wants good user experiences, as do potential admits and their families. A top priority for Google and senior care consumers is the ability to find information easily. While seniors are more digitally savvy than before, many are still technology illiterate. To address this, your site must be easy to navigate with an easy-to-understand information architecture.

Follow these best practices to improve conversions:

Make it Easy to Schedule an Appointment Offer more than one option to book an appointment, tour, or consultation. You may not realize it, but you may be forcing your audience to conform to what you want and limiting their options. Provide a range of options when it comes to bookings, including:

• Call directly from an ad • Click to call on a mobile device • Fill out a contact form • Send an email directly • Dial your number • Visit your physical location

Optimize Your Mobile Experience You know users are looking for you on mobile. Why make it harder for them? You need to prioritize the mobile user experience to be fast and responsive. Make sure that your click-to-call functionality on your landing pages and your online scheduling and forms are optimized for mobile, too.

Make Text Skimmable Site and ad texts are always tricky. They have to be detailed and precise but disseminated in an easy-toconsume way. To meet this strange balance of detail and “skimmability,” start here: • Include rich, comprehensive detail, but do it strategically • Break up long blocks of text with an organized hierarchy of headers, subheads, and bullets • Limit titles and headings to eight words or less (leaning toward less, where possible) • Keep paragraphs tidy (three to four sentences max) • Keep bullet points brief (a paragraph-long bullet point is just another paragraph!) • Emphasize pull quotes, key statistics, and social proof with distinct web elements

Use Social Proof Like in any industry, online reviews and digital reputation markers are essential in healthcare. Patients and admits tend to make decisions based on reviews, ratings, and testimonials they read online. So make sure to incorporate what available social proof you already have throughout your digital channels. How can you do that? In senior care, you might consider embedding reviews in ad campaigns. You should also make sure your site is replete with video testimonials, too, that can be repurposed across social media. In our experience, video is the most compelling social proof, though photos and quotes are more than adequate.

5. Seniors Have Questions - You Need Quality Content to Answer Them

The U.S. has a rapidly aging population that needs to determine their senior living and care options, quickly. Of course, given the stakes involved, it’s never that easy or quick a decision. Admits and their families will have questions, and your brand needs to answer them.

We’ve already discussed how seniors are becoming more tech-savvy, and you can be confident that their children are, too. They will go to the internet to find answers to their senior care needs. What are they asking? Anything from “what types of senior living communities exist” to “what’s the difference between independent and assisted living.” When they ask these questions, you need to make sure your senior care organization appears for those queries. As senior care moves into a busy future, 2023 will be all about engaging the best new hires, attracting admits, and leveraging technology in dynamic new ways. With an increasingly techliterate senior population, senior care organizations have a wealth of opportunities to attract admits and their families by optimizing content, ads, and more.

katie reeves

Chief Creative Guru & Solutions Hero of ktcreative; a boutique marketing agency